Word: rodriguez
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...When Ali Rodriguez was one of Venezuela's communist guerrillas in the 1960s and '70s, his chief duty ostensibly was making bombs. But Rodriguez admits he knew less about explosives than about oil--the stuff of real political power in Venezuela, which possesses the hemisphere's mother lode of petroleum reserves. "In the mountains, I organized seminars on oil administration," says Rodriguez, 66, whom fellow combatants remember as being the same energy-policy wonk then that he is today. "I committed myself body and soul to it." Not surprisingly, his petro-philosophy was more Marx than Rockefeller, and his rhetoric...
Venezuela's revolutionaries never did seize that stage by arms. They took it via votes, when left-wing President Hugo Chavez was elected in 1998. Rodriguez became Energy Minister and then in 2002 won the role of his dreams as president of Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA), the nation's $46 billion state-run oil monopoly and one of the U.S.'s top three suppliers. Instead of theorizing from a mountain lair, Rodriguez is perched in an office above Caracas, helping shape the world oil market. "I never imagined I'd be sitting here," Rodriguez tells TIME. "But then...
...curtain is rising this summer on Rodriguez's most interesting act yet: a five-year, $37 billion PDVSA plan to revive and expand oil production while budgeting almost $2 billion a year for antipoverty initiatives ranging from potable-water to literacy projects. Making PDVSA (called Pedevesa) an oil firm cum development agency will be daunting, even with crude prices hovering near $40 a bbl. Venezuela's oil industry has been waylaid by political turmoil, including a reckless near shutdown by anti-Chavez managers and other employees at PDVSA in 2002 and 2003, intended to paralyze the industry and force Chavez...
...cacharro [a cooking utensil], sound much the same, as do nada [nothing] and lana [wool]. Context tells you which." To test whether this is all lana over the visitor's eyes, Darias is asked to bring in some of his students. Antonio Ramos, Ivan Conrado, twins Paula and Mirta Rodriguez, Maria Garcia and Raico Sanchez do him proud. Maria whistles Antonio's name. He makes a sound that Darias spells out as fuio, which in Silbo means "What do you want?" She asks him the time. Antonio blasts back that it's 11:30 a.m. Paula Rodriguez is asked...
Similar to the modernization of the monarchy is the recent election of President Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero. As I sipped sangria with my friend Cesar—an economics student with communist tendencies—we discussed the lasting impression of Spain’s backwardness. Cesar felt that the recent election of Zapatero would finally change this image. The president has already proposed making abortions more accessible and even legalizing gay marriage. What once seemed alien in a traditionally Catholic country now has become accepted. While many, especially within the United States, criticized his decision to bring back...